Applying Continuous Improvement to Machine Health Itself

The benefits of Machine Health are clear to our customers: reduced downtime, more effective maintenance, and the ability to scale operations with greater efficiency– especially today, when facilities are often operating with reduced staff and increased pressure to get the most from existing production capabilities.

To deliver these benefits we know our Machine Health Solutions must have those same characteristics– so we’ve applied the same thinking our customers use to reduce their own maintenance and operational overhead to the way we make and deploy machine health itself.

To help our customers in every way possible as they deal with the challenges surrounding the global pandemic we’ve undertaken an end-to-end analysis of our Machine Health Solutions. Our goal was to make sure we are not just making our solution more powerful but also making it easier to implement (with or without our teams on site) and simpler to maintain, so that Machine Health is always online to keep our customers’ machines online.

Like our customers we know that this kind of continuous improvement isn’t always delivered by one big change– it’s really a constant series of small ones. In that spirit we’ve extended the battery life of our sensors (nearly a year longer) so they don’t have to be serviced as often. While that may not seem like a big deal, to a customer monitoring dozens or even hundreds of machines, that’s a significant reduction in time needed for maintenance (and one less reason for non-essential personnel to need to enter the facility). Small change = big result. Power over Ethernet for our Nodes is another small but important change; many facilities can get an ethernet connection where standard power is not available– so now getting connectivity is simpler than ever.

Keeping connectivity is also now easier than ever. We’ve implemented automated alerting when connectivity to a sensor is lost. This reduces risk from an unmonitored machine, and also helps our teams and the customer’s team know what needs to be done, and further reduces time on site.

Given the health climate that exists today, we’ve extended our continuous improvement thinking even earlier into the process, rethinking how our machine health solutions get implemented in the first place. We’re now using Augmented Reality tools and new processes to do guided self installation, where the customer’s onsite personnel install and configure the sensing and connectivity solutions, in real-time collaboration with our experts no matter where in the world they are. Early results are very exciting, giving our customers access to the benefits of Machine Health when they need it most, even if access to their facilities or travel to their locations is not possible.

Efficiency, Uptime, Reliability and Safety: that’s what our customers are trying to achieve using our Machine Health Solutions– and that’s what we’re continuing to achieve in how Machine Health itself can be deployed, maintained and used.

About the Author

Augury is building a world where people can always rely on the machines that matter. Augury supports its partners by enabling Digital Transformation through superior insights into the health and performance of the machines they use to make products, deliver services and improve lives.